


Me Too.

by Lapsang



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Asexual, F/M, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Love Confessions, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2836907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapsang/pseuds/Lapsang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris feels for Hawke in ways he never really expected to feel for anybody. There's just one thing; he's never had any desire to get her into bed, and that's what everyone seems to say he should want.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Me Too.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic on AO3! It's a short one, filling in around the canon romance. I got Fenris' confession stuck in my head and wanted to write around it... I get really nervous about writing characters in case I don't do them justice. Hope it's alright!
> 
> Be warned: there is a very brief reference which implies Fenris was sexually abused in the past. If this will bother you, I'd far rather you avoided the fic than triggered yourself! (Also, I know abuse isn't a prerequisite for asexuality, but I think there's a possibility it could have been just another awful thing Danarius could have done, which is why I included it. If I've messed up, please let me know!)

It's been over three years since he first met Hawke, bloody with the deaths of his pursuers in the dim lights of the Alienage. Three years since he ripped out that heart in front of her, three years since she helped him chase the ghosts from the mansion that was now his home, three years since he became part of her party of 'friends'. A few weeks since they returned triumphant from the Deep Roads, laden with coin and glory, for her to move into the estate that was hers by birthright. They were practically neighbours, now.

All that while she'd been a steadfast companion, visiting him regularly, helping him work his way through his wine cellar as well as some of the demons of his past. She was easy company, easier to talk to by far than anyone he'd met while on the run, and occasionally their banter had a flirtatious bent to it. He enjoyed that, unused to it as he was, but for the most part they left it at that. He was very fond of her, fonder by far than he had any real right to be. He knew he hated Anders all the more, for not only was he an abomination, but Hawke flirted with him too. And the blood mage, and the wench. He chided himself for ever thinking he was somehow special to her but also he couldn't help but to foolishly hope.

But he had a niggling fear. (Well, a niggling fear aside from all the unresolved trauma of his past and how it has a vice-tight hold he can't shake off his being.) For all that he desired her to stand beside him and him alone, he never desired her beside him in bed. To copulate with. All Varric's bawdy tales and Isabela's lewd boasting had him quite certain that this was something he should want, were he truly romantically inclined. Thus he restrained himself and tormented himself with his confused feelings 'till he could bear it no longer. He needed a consultant. And for sexual matters, only one acquaintance would do.

\-----

"Isabela," he said stiffly, approaching her usual station at the bar of the Hanged Man. She wheeled round at the sound of his voice, delight slurring its way across her features.

"Fenris! You're a sore sight for pretty eyes! Or a pretty sight for sore eyes." She paused, making a show of thinking it over, "Mm, no, I think the first is more accurate. What can I do you for?" She grinned like a drunken cat, or like a cat would if it could grin or get drunk, and already he started to regret this.

"Can we, ah, talk somewhere a little more... Private?" Fenris knew better than to expect anywhere truly secretive in the Hanged Man, but he'd be damned before he stuttered out his mewling troubles before the entire tavern.

"Shy, are we, big boy? Sure you don't want to do more than just talk?" She smirked, but she had already grabbed him by the wrist and was leading him up the stairs to where she kept a room. (Or, well, he assumed it was hers. He didn't want to ask.) She settled in a rickety-looking chair and leaned back, crossing her legs up on the table in front of her.

"So, Broody, thought I'd swear abstinence before you ever came to me for advice." He fidgeted awkwardly, her remark hitting remarkably close to the bone. She smiled and pulled a knife from _somewhere_ (better not to think about it) and began fishing dirt out from under her nails, watching him through her lashes.

He shuffled on the spot, trying to find words that wouldn't get him laughed out in five seconds flat. Hesitantly, delicately, he said, "If you have... Affections for someone, does it always follow that you want to bed them?" He dragged his eyes down from the cobweb in the corner of the room to her slack-jawed face and regretted ever setting foot in this blasted dive.

"You... What?" She squawked, clearly having trouble determining how this was not obvious.  But she was no dullard, and he watched as some pieces in her head clearly clicked into place. "You like someone but you don't want to bang them, is that it?" She leaned forward eagerly, front legs of her chair hitting the floor with a 'thud'.

"I... Yes, that about sums it up," he replied tersely, digging his claws into his palms not quite hard enough to draw blood, staring intently at a stain on the floor which may or may not have been blood. She clucked pityingly.

"Oh, Fenris. That's called being _asexual_." He looked up at her sharply, and she continued, "Lack of sexual attraction. Can't fathom what that's like, of course, you know me, but it exists. Met a sailor once. Absolutely couldn't get her into bed, no matter what I did, and she told me that she never wanted to fuck anybody, not just me, and that's what it was called. So there you go. You're not alone, bucko."

All he could do was gape at her, slowly turning pink while she leant back again looking mighty pleased with herself. He fumbled for words, and croaked out, "But what if sh- they- want to..?" She gave him a look like he was simple.

"Then you talk it out. Explain. Good communication is the foundation of any worthwhile relationship," she explained, going back to preening her nails. Glancing up at his skeptical face, she added irritably, "Just because relationships aren't my thing doesn't mean I know nothing about them, you know."

Now thoroughly schooled, all he could really do was sputter out a brief thanks and flee back to his decrepit mansion to broo- no, _think_ , think over what she said and work out its implications for him and his feelings for Hawke.

He left an exceptionally good bottle of rum at the bar for her when he could next spare the coin.

\-----

It was after he'd killed Hadriana, crushed her pitiful little heart in his hands, and run away, her words and her death leaving so many conflicting emotions - hatred, anger, desperation, _fear_ \- coursing through his veins. He'd shoved Hawke away, rejected her concern for him, thrown her off in his selfish tantrum and left the others to pick their way back to town alone.

He knew he had to go back and explain. This he did, and Hawke had been far more gentle and understanding than he deserved, but so wrapped up was he in his own misery that it barely touched him. When he turned to go, she stopped him. He'd nearly turned on her then, lyrium pulsing hot and cold simultaneously, his anger crashing through him, and he was tearing himself away when she pulled him in and kissed him, oh how she'd kissed him, and he'd kissed back.

Breathless, they'd gone up to her bedchambers, closed the door, and then stopped on the threshold, suddenly both reluctant to continue. She kissed him again, more hesitantly this time, but he was tense, unable to return any kind of passion. She broke away, sat on the edge of the bed, and looked at him with an expression he couldn't quite read.

"Fenris? Is everything alright?" The concern in her voice was almost too much to bear.

He took a deep breath. This was it. This was happening. Communication. He had to tell her.

"I... I want this. Want you. So much that, sometimes, I forget how to breathe. To be without you would be intolerable. But I cannot," and it's here that he starts to choke up, "I cannot do this thing now, I cannot… be with you... Intimately." He lowers his eyes to the side now, snowy lashes shading his view, voice quiet as he clarifies, "Sexually."

All she can do is stare at him, dumbfounded. She tries to speak, but all she can do is start to laugh. He can't stand it.

"Hawke," he says warningly, looking at her again, as he pleads "Hawke!" His voice cracks on the last, and she reins herself in, hating that she bought him distress, but-

She gets up off the bed, pulls him close into a tight hug. "Oh, Fenris. I'm _relieved_." She buries her face in his shoulder as he tenses, confused. She pulls back to look him in the eyes, and he sees the start of tears there. "I'm the same." She smiles weakly, and holds him close again.

He awkwardly raises his arms to return the embrace, patting her uncertainly on the back. His mind is blank, thoughts spilling everywhere and nowhere. This was not what he'd expected. He'd been dreading the worst; confusion, repulsion, heartbreak, rejection. This, well; this was beyond what he'd dared hope for. He knew darkness so much better than salvation, after all.

She breaks away, and senses the questions he wants to ask; she's good at that. As non communicative as he can be, that's a blessing. She sits back down on the bed and motions for him to join her. He does so.

"As much as I play along with Isabela's... Well, Isabela's Isabelas, and Maker knows I flirt, I never quite 'got it'." She says haltingly, gaze trained on the depths of the fireplace, "You know, wanting to do those things with people. I know how to spot someone attractive as well as the next person, I like being close, and the kissing's fun, but," she spreads her hands in a helpless kind of shrug, "Sex. Never really got the urge." She looks over at him, listening intently at her side. “This, I… I care about you, Fenris. A lot. If you wanted, I’d be willing to try, but... “ She breaks off to laugh nervously and lets that sentence die unfinished. She nudges him. "You next."

He turned away and stared off into the middle distance for a long pause before replying, considering her words and mulling over his own. "I have no way of knowing if I desired such things before _this_ ," he gestured vaguely at the markings on one arm with lips curled in disgust, "But I recall no attractions since." He stopped. "Danarius, he... Sometimes, he..." Fenris halted again, letting the silence and Hawke's imagination fill in what he could still not bring himself to say. Unable to bear the weight of her gaze, he stood up and began to pace, anxiety getting the better of him.

"I always thought- always assumed- this was just another thing Danarius denied me, another way in which he broke me." He looked at her again, at her eyes full of compassion, and continued, "To hear that you feel the same way is an indescribable ease on my mind." A thought dawned on him then, his eyes widening, as he hastily asked, "Unless? Were you ever?"

"No, no, never," she reassured him, waving her hands in distressed dismissal. "It's just how I am. Whether it's just how you are too or if it's a side effect of what that vile man did to you, we'll never know, but, either way, I'm glad you understand." She smiled up at him, almost achingly lovely to see, and he leant in carefully to gently kiss her on the cheek.

"Me too, Hawke. Me too."

So they collapse on the bed, laughing with joy and relief, and pick up where they left off.

\-----

Sadly, this kindness is still too much for him to bear, and he leaves Hawke a scant hour later, unwelcome memories pounding in his head, his skin itching and burning from all the contact of skin and sheets, his past choking even this corner of happiness. But he would remember. He would always remember.


End file.
